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Somehow.
“I need to get back out there.” He had the training to be out there. To be some damned help. He looked at the sheriff, his cousin Phoebe's husband. He loved that woman. So damned much his heart threatened to pump itself out of his chest. Or break. Right inside of him. “I just need to find her, Joel. Somehow.”
Joel leaned closer. Ben ignored the wind and the snow. “How long have you been in love with her, Ben?”
He just shook his head. “Forever. Or maybe just from this very minute. I don’t…know. I just know that Iam.And she’s out there. Needingme.She needs me, Joel. Let me out there.”
From the moment he’d realized she was missing, he’d justgot it.Exactly what he felt for that maddening woman.
“Yeah. I understand what you mean.”
He made himself a promise: once they found her, he was going to let her know how he felt. Even if she decided he was a surly bastard who she wanted nothing to do with, he was going to tell her.
Ben had never been one who waited. Not when it mattered most.
Joel shifted, blocked the rest of the crowd from hearing or seeing. “I’ll tell you what I know so far. Nothing says I can keep you from going out driving. It looks like she parked willingly, but quickly. Footprints approached her car. Large ones, probably male. Her bag and phone were left on the seat of the truck. There are signs of a struggle, then. Maybe someone being…dragged a little. Someone…smaller.”
His blood froze, right where he stood. Colder than the damned light snow that was falling around them now. “That’s going to terrify her. To have it happen again. In the damned snow. The roads around this damned town are too isolated.”
“We may have had a sighting of an out-of-town van, near Fletcher’s place, with a woman resembling Dusty in the driver’s seat. But that’s it. We’re starting road blocks on all the major highways. And we’re getting volunteers in place for all the side roads and back roads. I’m going to do whatever it takes to get her back. You just need to trust me.”
But they’d both worked the cop gig long enough to know, once an abductor got a woman in their vehicle, chances of survival dropped. Considerably.
“I’m going out there. Tell me where to concentrate.”
“Toward River Road. That’s the direction the van was headed. Eli Masterson was out that way. He saw it turn off near the old Beise place.”
“I’m going.”
“I figured you would.”
Ben didn’t hear anything else he said. A familiar pair of trucks were pulling in. Fletcher and Gil climbed out of the first. Martin and Reese and Kaece climbed out of the next.
More Tylers had arrived. Word had gone out less than an hour ago. There they were. Ready to help.
Now it was time to get Dusty back where she belonged.
41
Fred Brown—akaArthur Arnold Talley—wasn’t going to be able to keep his third daughter for too long. But he would be damned if he would let her go in the early morning hours. What was she going to do, walk along the highway in the snow and ice? Hope someone came along to help her? Hell, no. He’d figure out a way to get herhome.Somehow.
Truckers and all sorts of out-of-towners used this highway. A beautiful girl like his daughter, walking alone—that was just asking for trouble.
He sat in the small travel trailer, by the window, keeping one eye on the storage shed where they had her now. They had just enough heat in the trailer that he and Geena wouldn’t freeze to death.
He wrapped another blanket around his Geena. He’d put the space heater in the shed with their daughter. But his wife had pointed out that it was an old heater and they didn’t know whose it was or how well it worked or how safe it actually was.
It might stop working, it might catch fire. Their daughter could suffocate, or freeze to death out there, she’d pointed out. Multiple times.
Geena was freaking.
He had agreed to check on Destiny periodically, just to keep his Geena calm. Her anxiety had just gotten worse over the years. He should have gotten her therapy years ago. He had been so afraid she’d inadvertently disclose something dangerous about their past, he never had.
Hell of a husband he’d turned out to be.
She had always deserved so much better than him. As their four youngest girls had gotten older, her fears had just grown. And sometimes, sometimes he thought maybe she was angsting over the girls she’d left behind, too. Phantom fears she’d never be able to alleviate. Never be able to put to rest with a simple peek in her daughters’ bedrooms, or a check on them from the window while they played. She’d lost all of that with the four older girls.
Sometimes, he wondered if the trauma of leaving them behind had damaged her beyond repair.
